The dreadful dangers of normalization and the terrible mistakes of the Good Men Project. (Or why most men don’t rape (continued)

Like many a fresh-faced psychology student, I drifted into my first modules on forensic psychology and criminology wanting an answer to the question: why do people commit crimes?

The first lesson I learned has stuck with me ever since. In order to understand why people commit crimes, we first need to try to understand why most people don’t. Of course different schools of thought have different answers. Freud attributed it to the superego (famously described as that part of the personality which is soluble in alcohol.) Behaviourists, and their successors in cognitive theory and social learning, have constructed increasingly complex conditioning models of rewards and punishments. More recently evolutionary psychologists have pointed to a pro-social tribal instinct as an evolutionary survival mechanism. Whichever terms we prefer, the common theme is that we have, as a species, a powerful pull towards doing the right thing.

One of the strongest pulls in the human brain is conformity. For whatever reasons, human behaviour imitates and conforms with perceived social expectations, for better or worse. The experiments of Milgram, Sherif and Asch have crossed into popular consciousness, and in widely ranging contexts, from riots to totalitarian states, go a long way to explaining why apparently good people can do bad things.

One more recent adaption of this is social norms theory, which holds in part that behaviour is affected by estimations of its prevalence – the “hey, everyone is doing it” thought process. Heavy drinkers believe heavy drinking is more common than it actually is and the same goes for problem gamblers, domestic abusers and sexual offenders. The theory holds that if you can change the perceptions of social norms, you can alter behaviour.

The theory is very much a work in progress, and many academics (not to mention this blogger) remain dubious about the more ambitious claims of its proponents, but the evidence base is growing all the time and we can see the principles coming into action in various rape prevention schemes, which differ from traditional risk-reduction campaigns, in that they are squarely aimed at potential offenders rather than victims. Examples can be seen in the growing, overdue and very welcome move towards ‘Don’t be that guy’ style campaigns rather than the ‘Don’t be that girl’ campaigns of tradition.

Over the past couple of weeks, the Good Men Project has run a series of articles about men who have not felt sufficient pull towards the right thing. To be precise, they have raped. It began with Alyssa Royse’s now notorious piece entitled Nice Guys Commit Rape Too. I strongly criticised the piece here, as others did here and here, and in the face of criticism, and presumably in the hope it will act as a trump card in the argument, the GMP editors have made the extraordinary, offensive and entirely irresponsible decision to publish a piece by a self-confessed unconvicted rapist.

I believe that one of the most grievous errors of the original Royse piece was to imply that acts like that committed by her friend the rapist are so common as to be mundane. She confirmed this in the comments to my previous blog, when she suggested “it cannot be as simple as saying “he’s bad.” Because to say so would mean that at least 50% of the men out there are bad.”

Royse would have us believe that “at least 50%” would do what her friend did. I’m unclear whether she means that at least half of all men would rape a sleeping woman given the chance; or that at least half have in some way victimised a woman in a drunken muddle or fumble. I’m not sure which is worse. The former is wildly detached from any credible evidence of the prevalence of rape and normalizes the cruel act. The latter implies that what her friend did was not really any different to a clumsy drunken pass or an ill-timed arse-grab, and so minimizes it.

Bad and damaging though the Royse piece and comments may have been, the new article is unforgivable. From the headline to the conclusion, it is pretty much nothing but an object lesson in minimization and normalization. The title is “I’d Rather Risk Rape Than Quit Partying” and it is soon clear that the anonymous author is not really referring to his risk of being raped (although that is alluded to later), he is actually saying that he’s raped at least once and he’d rather risk raping someone else than quit partying. Gee, that’s big of you.

His point, such as it is, would appear to be that he moves in social circles where he and his friends regularly get wasted and have intoxicated sex, with varying degrees of inappropriateness, sobriety and clarity of consent. The argument is muddled in too many ways to list (I’m sure other blogs will fill in), but what I find most disturbing is that there is an absolute absence of remorse, shame or empathy for his victim. Even though his victim phoned him up, in the midst of a recovery programme (one can speculate how she ended up needing it) and told him outright he had raped her, he still didsn’t believe it. He says he only really feels like a rapist when he is “severely depressed.”

I’m guessing the editors at the Good Men Project thought that his story would illustrate the point that Royse was trying to make, even prove her right. What it actually did was instantly validate her critics. Here is a man who pushed a woman up against the wall and sexually abused her while his buddies cheered him on, and who still doesn’t think of himself as a rapist. Then along comes a respected, liberal gender politics website telling him hey, don’t worry, you’re not a bad guy, you were just confused. Nice guys commit rape too, you know.

I believe there is a moral imperative on anyone writing or speaking about rape (or any similar crime, for that matter) to consider how their words will be heard, read and interpreted by different parts of the audience. One part may be those with a professional, academic or political interest. Another is those who have been directly or indirectly affected, most importantly survivors of the crime. But another is no less important – those who have actually committed the crime, who may do so again in the future or, perhaps most importantly, those who may be at risk of doing so for the first time. With a vague knowledge of psychological principles, it should be easy to understand why responsible writing on sexual abuse should never demonize or dehumanize rape victims – phrases like Royse’s “if it walks like a fuck and talks like a fuck” spring to mind. It should be easy to understand why we must always stress and never forget the human cost, physical harm and emotional trauma caused by rape – something both the GMP articles do to a great extent. And we should never portray rapists as being just like every other guy when they are not, in one significant respect – they rape people. Not by accident, not out of drunken confusion, not as a result of ‘mixed-signals.’ They do it because they choose to force sex without consent. The Good Men Project have clumsily trampled over all of that.

A few months ago I wrote about the Reddit thread in which rapists admitted to and described their crimes. I was torn at the time as to the relative benefits and risks, but finally swayed by a post from my blogging friend gherkinette, who described how the thread had finally allowed her to realise that the attacks were not about her. “I came away finally seeing that it wasn’t something we victims had done. It wasn’t our hemlines or our flirtatiousness or taking a cab or having another chardonnay. It was because a certain type of man wants to rape.”

In thinking about the Royse piece, and now the anonymous follow-up, I’ve returned to the question raised then. How would the victims of rapists feel when they read the pieces? Would it help to make sense of what happened to them, in any way make them feel better about what had happened? And then imagine how rapists feel after reading the piece (and by any measure of probabilities, that is almost a certainty). Ashamed? Belittled? Determined to change their attitudes and behaviour? Or justified and excused?

I’m reluctant to suggest that the GMPs articles have actually made some future rapes more likely, but it would be foolish to ignore the risks. I would be much more confident in saying that rapists reading the piece or contributing to the site will feel assuaged, a little more at peace with their consciences, and a little bit better about themselves. Nice guys commit rape too, you know, and rape isn’t such a big deal. It’s not something important like giving up partying, now is it?

UPDATES

The Independent asked to republish this, but I ended up writing yet another piece, making a few more points, rather more concisely!

I’ve really liked both of your pieces responding to this horrible stuff.

I have a request: Could you take the Good Men Project off your “Like Minds and Places of Interest” list? I clicked on “No seriously, what about teh menz?” with interest, but apparently that’s a GMP link too.

A while ago I saw a big stick next to a railway track and decided it would be fun to chuck it on. I thought that for about 3 seconds until I realized how dangerous and callous it would be.

I’ve always thought people who commit rape, murder, arson or whatever probably do so because they willingly live in that moment between desire and consideration. The line “He says he only really feels like a rapist when he is “severely depressed”” made me suspect I’m probably right. He feels guilty when he’s depressed because he can’t keep himself distracted enough to stop his mind going places he doesn’t want it to. It’s like double think

Until i was big enough to fight him off i was a punchbag for my father.And my mother used to use the threat of his violence- when he was around- to keep me and my siblings under control.So i grew up not only thinking this was normal behavior but i also had a pathological hatred of men who reminded me of my dad and of manipulative women who reminded me of my mum.Yet as i’ve gotten older and hopefully a bit wiser i know that most men and women are not like my parents.

The reason i mention this is because it seems to me that some feminists use their personal experiences of rape,domestic violence and child abuse to justify their demonisation of a big portion of the male population.That they view these behaviours as being intrinsically male .And that peer pressure and the pack mentality amongst men are responsible for a multitude of sins involving the abuse of others.

And yes there’s some truth in that.But i also remember my mum encouraging me to batter anyone who upset me and quite a few of my mates mums were just the same.I remember all the punchups as a young man i had with other guys which were instigated by my sisters and various girlfriends.That’s what these various females expected of me as a male-as well as the peer pressure i had from other males- and it was only in my 20’s that i begun to question it all.

Forgive me if what i’m writing seems off-topic to what you’ve written about but i don’t think it is.Because i believe that just as the decent majority of men and women are inter-dependent on each other the same also goes for those men and women who are either damaged in some way and/or who are perhaps genetically programmed to be bad.And that simply demonising the men doesn’t deal with the whole picture.

I wholly agree these things are interlinked. The blog above was already far too long (apologies everyone, as Oscar Wilde would say, I didn’t have time to write a short one) so there was a lot of stuff I couldn’t go into.

Within social conditioning models, to which I broadly subscribe, there’s a huge amount of research into how early / childhood experiences contribute towards future behaviour but we have to be very careful of a simplistic ‘kids who are abused will become abusers’ argument, because they usually don’t.
I think if we can understand the differences between why some do when many don’t (and indeed why some people with no obvious problems in socialization can also become abusers) then we’d be getting a lot closer to answering all of this.

The only thing I’d dispute in your comment is the suggestion of people being ‘genetically programmed’ – rarely convinced by that in any context.

I’ll add, I don’t believe in demonizing people, including rapists. However I think it is really important that we do demonize (for want of a better word) their behaviour.

Just wanted to say thank you for writing this and the previous piece Ally. I’ve been reading the GMP stuff with growing horror and have lacked the emotional energy to tackle them myself.

One of the things that bothers me most about this current thread of articles is that they are published by women who do not appear to have ever been raped which adds a layer of superiority and blame in there that many victims will know well but never gets spoken about: the women who reassure themselves that they won’t get raped like you because they are better/smarter/stronger/cleverer/understand him more.

Plenty of women like this exist but rarely get mentioned, maybe because the truth of them is so unpalatable or maybe because although the ones who do it, do very loudly, there aren’t as many as I think. Reading the threads by Joanna and Alyssa, I was so reminded of V who reacted like this to my first rape. Years of friendship out the window, she blamed me for my attack splitting up her relationship with her boyfriend, but then took the side of the attacker, accepting gifts from him, becoming friends and moving him in when I moved out. She threatened me that he would rape me again and it was devastating. She was marking her territory and making herself safe by allying herself with him, but she was also making sure everyone knew my vulnerabilities and saying I was only worth being raped & disposable.

I hadn’t thought about her much for years since I now have lovely supportive friends, but god, this GMP stuff reminded me of it. Emily Rose says here in her blog about only one kind of rape, but two types of rapist http://musingsofemilyrose.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/rape-apologist.html?zx=16ceeda6a0dbb772 but I wondered if there is a certain type of woman so scared of rape they cross sides from the non raping part of the world to the small murky world of those who do as if to protect themselves? I find it challenging to think why some women would tie themselves in knots defending self confessed rapists otherwise? It’s baffling to me, hence the lack of articulate thinking…

I’m usually reluctant to speculate on the hidden, ulterior or unconscious ,motivations of writers, I hate it when people do it to me, so try not to do it to others. But we’re probably way past that point here anyway so fuck it!

Someone somewhere (can’t remember who, aplogies if you’re reading) suggested that Royse obviously really didn’t like the woman raped in her initial article, even before the event. The description of her behaviour beforehand drips with venom (most notably the “walks like a fuck…” line), whereas she admits the rapist was a “dear friend.”

I suspect that even though she knows rationally, objectively and politically that her friend is 100% in the wrong, she doesn’t feel that emotionally. She resents the victim for somehow “turning” her friend into a rapist. She’s scrabbling around desperately for grounds on which to find his behaviour forgivable or understandable rather than seeing the truth, which is that he is simply a rapist.

Then I think what we’ve seen is Joanna Schroeder (either as a personal friend or supportive editor, I genuinely don’t know) showing a similar urge to rush to the defence of Royse, and even though she probably knows rationally, objectively and politically that her friend is 100% in the wrong, she’s gone to extraordinary lengths to be supportive, culminating in publishing the self-justifications of a rapist, in a desperate bid to prove they’ve got a point.

I want to second the thanks to Ally. In August, I wrote a post called “Some Things We Could Actualy Do About Rape” and the actions of the GMP have done the opposite of about two thirds of what I suggested. I only got as far as Joanna’s warning on the article, which basically said, “If you’ve been raped yourself, don’t read this. It has nothing to do with you.”

Nikky, I can’t imagine such a betrayal and you’re pretty amazing to have come through that without a deep mistrust of everyone! I’m afraid I think the answer is that some women don’t have a problem with aggression and violence, that they think these are normal parts of human behaviour and that what marks you as a good or bad person is only a matter of degrees. Your friend Z wasn’t just unsympathetic, she used rape as a weapon against you. She may have been motivated by fear, or jealousy, or a wish to have power over you – to share in the power she perceived your rapist to have. But I think it was more than making herself safe.

When I’ve talked to men about violence against women over the years, there’s a profound difference in the way that different men feel anxious about these subjects. I think a lot of (usually straight) men have the vague sense that women have this power over them, whereby a malicious woman could make an accusation which could ruin their life. Our society behaves like that’s a common thing – it’s certainly a common narrative in fiction. And frankly, when women are abusive towards men, it isn’t an uncommon threat (although it’s rarely carried out because the costs of accusation, as all rape victims know, are extremely high).

Such men are the sort that might promote the idea that false accusations are endemic, and be highly skeptical about news stories of sexual abuse (last night my Dad declared that Patrick Moore was bound to be accused of all kinds of things now that he’s dead), and that’s a big problem.

But there are other men who are anxious that there are no allowances being made for their actual behaviour. It’s not that they are afraid of being accused of something they didn’t do, but that they will be unreasonably punished for something they consider reasonable. Such men may sincerely consider themselves the best of men, whilst still believing that there are massive grey areas around consent and sometimes violence is a perfectly reasonable response. My ex would never deny hitting me, but he would tell a story about what happened, usually quite ludicrous, to explain why he had little choice; I had cornered him and stopped him walking away (when he punched me in the back) or even that he was stopping me injuring myself! In the meantime, he could enjoy movies where abused women avenged themselves, because what those men had done was properly out of order.

Anyway, some women are just the same. There are women who won’t buy the stats and who might act shocked and say daft things like “Are you quite sure?” when you tell them about a rape or other violence, but there are others who will see what happened to you as normal, and probably somehow deserved. There’s also this cultural thread – this Fifty Shades of Grey thing – which isn’t about masochism, so much as the idea that troubled violent men are cool, edgy and attractive in some way and that the women whose hearts are big and open enough to “understand” and accept them are super special and lovely. And I don’t mean to say, “It’s because she fancies him!” because it’s just as often about family, friendship, cultural or religious loyalty, even institutional rank.

There was some of that in my first marriage, but the danger that one day my ex would hurt someone else was a real fear. Because I wouldn’t have been able to stand by him then. Yet given that I knew it was an ongoing possibility, I wasn’t a million miles from the kind of person who would.

Nikki…..just replying to let you know that Alyssa was stalked and raped at gunpoint, in her own bed, in the middle of the night when she was 16 years old. That’s what prompted her to work with victims and perps.

I only mention this because you wondered if she’d been raped. She’s shared her story before, and I believe you can find it on YouTube.

I think the fact that you read the story as being written by a woman who “appeared” not to have been raped is telling. I already knew Alyssa’s story, but I can see how a reader would draw the conclusion that you did.

I’ve spent time nearly everyday since the article was published just reading all the comments and the rebuttals.
I’ve not been able to coalesce my thoughts into any kind of intelligent, meaningful response.

But as a victim of sexual violence……that started in the middle of what actually began consensually, I can honestly say that I haven’t been triggered this intensely in decades. Decades.

I get what she’s trying to bring up. I really do. Setting aside whether or not the premise of the article was valid, appropriate, useful or harmful, after someone has been triggered to the degree that the article seems to have done to many, many people, the conversation is over before it began. In that way, the article is an epic fail.

Your comment has resonated with me more deeply than most other comments I have read underneath any of the three GMP articles. All I really feel, reading the articles and many of the comments, is anger and frustration. It has been extremely triggering, and in the worst way. Each article, in its own way, has seemed like a sympathy fest for the poor widduw wapist – so even though they have been posted under the guise of ‘opening up debate’ around that grey-area rape, there does not appear to be grey area.

I did not know Alyssa’s story, but I think it IS telling, because when I read the article, I thought that this woman can not know how it feels, or she would never have written those words. And actually, she clearly doesn’t.

I have sometimes – and this is going to sound insane – but I have sometimes wished that even one of the rapes I endured was good old legitimate stranger rape. Just to be believed and supported one time. To be the right kind of victim. To not have ‘walked like a fuck and talked like a fuck’, or be called an attention-seeker, or had mutual friends remain friends with the people who raped me because they didn’t want to ‘choose sides’. Even if one of them had left a visible bruise, as actual proof, rather than just my word (which, you know, ‘she said she was raped before so… DEFINITELY lying’).

I see that article as a huge betrayal coming from a woman who works with survivors. I can see why she felt the need to do it, but it disgusts me.

I see the “Id rather keep raping than stop partying” article as a slap in the face on top of that – because it reminds me that the guys who raped me don’t give a shit that they did it. They are still perving around, with all their apologist friends. Like this guy, they don’t ‘identify as rapists’ (and he can fuck right off for that sentence).

They might feel a bit guilty when they’re depressed, and what little shred of conscience they have reminds them that they are, in fact, rapists – but see, I know that they are rapists every single day of my life. So forgive me if my sympathy is limited!

I am just sad that what could have been a much needed look at the ‘grey area’, by way of hammering it into people’s heads what is NOT acceptable, and when you DO NOT fuck people, has instead turned into Rape Apolofest 2012.

I am thankful for people like Ally, and all the people commenting who are not ok with what has been written – but this has done nothing but perpetuate victim-blaming and instil the idea that yeah, as a rapist you’ll probably get away with it, with your social life and your conscience intact.

Me- I’m not sure the Royse article’s cast were involved in a rape….
But then I’m bored and skeptical when it comes to the recollections of people who pass out at a fuck-fest…
And I have no idea of what Royse’s credentials are- but I will observe that considering how she treats her “friend” I’d hate to be a stranger on a life raft with her.

@ deezer- one falls asleep at home, one passes out at a bacchanalia- they both passed out & it wasn’t at a library lecture.
I’m not “trolling”; this whole GMP thread is banging the boards in my head.
No one knows to what these to sots agreed….
And all the GMP rape articles, lately, have booze as a prominent component of the story….
And as an aside she initiated aggressive physical contact- not that 2 wrongs….

I simply can not fathom who or what this latest “a rapist speaks” piece is for. As it comes hot on the heels of their two latest ignominious pieces I can only presume that it is meant to function as some kind of support for those pieces (an observation I note they edited out of my comment on their site); The actual life and times of a Nice Guy(tm). But instead we get the story of a juvenile, border-line sociopath.

I find the whole thing really upsetting, exposing who the cruel, depressing mundanity of rape; not some knife weilding attacker just some asshole you know who woould rather keep taking drugs than not rape

Actually I think that the publications expose the issue well. I really do think we have a real overall problem with “norms” in our society. In that having consciously sought to do away with the previous social norms we are left with a mess. The value of the Don’t be that guy type campaigns are that they are at least clear on what is bad behaviour. Simple straightforward messages can at least be understood. The rampant narcissism and self gratification of the subjects and their apologists needs to be exposed. It seems the baby boomers freedom from the restrictions of their parents society ends in nearly a third of teenage girls and a sixth of teenage boys reporting coercion in their sex lives. There actually seems little in the social norms of today to support those young people to develo clear ideas of respect. Roll on more campaigns to support the instincts for respect.

While I broadly agree that exposing the faults of such people and their apologists is broadly a good idea it’s really not clear that was what the the GMP piece was about, especially given their immediate prior form. Although it does expose The GMP site as the slightly odious, wrong headed project I suspected it was from the outset.

As for your other point, I’d be genuinely surprised if rape is more or less prevelant today than in the 50s or previously. The heel of male privilege bit much more deeply back then than it does today (to mix too many metaphors).

That said if we are to point the finger of blame it’s hard not to single out an economic system that requires both parents to be earning in order to support a family, in turn spending long hours away from family and community commitments.

No, she flirted. HE initiated ‘agressive physical contact’ by penetrating her sleeping body with his penis, without her consent. I am sorry, but this is not one of those grey areas. This is clear cut rape. Whether she was in a library or a brothel is not really relevant whatsoever.

“No one knows to what these to sots agreed….” – Well , we know that she DIDN’T agree to him fucking her without her knowledge, which is why this rape (because that is what it IS) is being discussed.

Yes, alcohol is absolutely a very common denominator in many rapes. That doesn’t mean drunk people are deserving of rape, or responsible for keeping unwanted penises out of their bodies, so I’ll admit I am unsure about what your point is there.

D sadly I can’t recall the reference but I do recall a study suggesting that Rape was less prevalent. But this is a bit difficult to compare as the offence itself was differently defined in the 50s. Essentially as it had been in the Victorian era as a crime against virginity. What studies and experience indicate is there was a lot less sex certainly for teens. And the rules were all too clear and rigorously applied by “society” AkA parents. Of course we can’t go back but I do think that the sexualisation commented on widely and the cult of the individual does give much room for rationalisations for plainly selfish behaviour. As the legal definitions of a number of sexual crimes have changed dramatically over my adult life probably one can never know comparatively the prevalence. What one can do is be clear now on the rules as set in law. Remembering that laws are simply rules not necessarily morality. The pieces referred to read as simply as an extreme form of the individualistic narcissism that drives miuch of our public morality. No one it seems need take responsibility if it conflicts with their “feelings” or “choices”.

Hmmm- in the eye of the beholder.
Flirting ,for me, is a quip & a wink.
Jumping in my lap & doing the dirty grind while discussing sex is either rape or foreplay.
And again I’m of the opinion- my opinion- that there is such a dirth of facts in the original story that I discount the whole tale.

And thank you whomever filled in Ms Royse’s credentials- it helps me take her comments more seriously.

There’s little doubt that rape is considerably less common now than it was not so long ago.

In the US, according to the official crime victimisation figures, rapes were at a high in about 1980 and have dropped about 90% since then. From memory it’s dropped from something like 3 per 1000 per year to 0.3 per 1000 per year.

In the UK the stats aren’t easily comparable because they changed the law (and the BCS) to include marital rape after 1994, but even then the prevalence rate dropped by about 50% between 94 and 2010.

There are problems with those measures, but they’re the best we’ve got and whether or not the actual numbers are accurate, nobody really doubts the trend.

Apart from anything else, I think these stats put a huge dent in the theory that an increasingly sexualised culture or some kind of continuing “moral decay” is a major factor in rape prevalence. Seems the more sexualised our culture becomes, the less common rape becomes (although of course there are many other factors at play)

Thank you that is good news on rape. Does that also suggest all the angst about sexual coersion is also a diminishing problem? Somehow all the figures and campaigns don’t add up. It is difficult to decide what is a “moral panic” and what an issue that is real.

I gave up on the Bad Dog Project quite some time ago, because despite its carefully inclusive and caring language, the feminist fundamentalism that lurked beneath the surface kept showing. It’s like those Peanuts cartoons where Lucy held the football for Charlie Brown to kick, and swore to him that this time she wouldn’t pull it away. Charlie Brown was always, despite his misgivings, convinced, and ran up to kick the ball, and Lucy always pulled it away and he fell on his arse.

Feminists like these make a big noise about how sympathetic they are to men’s issues, and when men who are desperate to believe they’re not all like that are suckered in, they change the subject to how we’re all monsters. They’ve now gone to the depths (and I only know this from reading your blog) of presenting us with a couple of unrepentant rapists, and telling us, with a carefully simulated caring tone, “that’s you, that is.” The GMP is nothing more than Julie Bindel by stealth. Get out of there.

Feminists talk a lot about “rape culture”, a culture that normalises and trivialises rape, that, in Susan Brownmiller’s words, uses rape consciously to keep women in a state of fear. The only culture that does any of that is feminism itself. To someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Personally I think the big problem with GMP (in the round, not this specific saga) is an excess of woolly individualist liberalism and self-help empowerment thang which, because it is not really underpinned by any meaningful political principles, resuilts in their being blown all over the place, including into some pretty nasty corners.

Part of the reason they’ve found themselves in this mess, I think, is not because of some secret man-hating feminist agenda, but because they have this over-active urge to see the best in everyone, even if that everyone includes self-confessed rapists.

To be honest the original piece reads more like “I’m special so therefore so is my mate” and goes on to tortured argument to prove it. Not an unnatural human behaviour . Enjoyed and learned from the articles and comments here. Thank you.

Would agree with you Ally, that the GMP does tend to vacillate between one extreme and another and that this can make for some muddled thinking. So, for instance, a month or so back they published the suicide note of a gifted swimmer, who had decided to drown himself. The whole thing was presented almost as a form of emotional blackmail, along the lines that, from now on, you shall never challenge the concept of ‘political correctness’, and you shall never sleep with a woman if she is drunk. Irksome and offensive, but on a completely different level.
So more reason and less polemic from the GMP would not go amiss, but a lot of the sanctimonious drivel they’ve published in recent times will most likely have been a niche interest at any rate.

Trey Martin was a troubled young man who in addition to being a gifted swimmer was arrested days before his suicide behind acting out with alcohol and striking a police officer…. my complaint with GMP is they have spent the best part of the past month dancing around the elephant in the living room.

What bearing this has on the ‘Quit Partying’ piece, of course, it’s hard to say, as the exact circumstances of what happened are never clearly defined, just heavily insinuated. That said, the general tenor and attitude of the writer do not exactly give cause for hope that consent was sought and obtained in good faith, and a callous and uncaring outlook is what comes across above all. I can certainly see why you believe it would be a distressing read for victims, and that it should never have been published at all.

I’ve been mulling this issue over in my mind for a few days and this is what has resulted.

There is something to be said about our culture and rape, and how poorly so many people understand consent, sexual assault and rape (see http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=16618 for one survey – not sure about the USA but I presume they have similar problems). I’m pretty certain there are similar surveys where people say they don’t think various things are rape, when legally they are rape (e.g. partner being really drunk, asleep, they change their mind during sex).

Royse says some things that have merit. But she’s wrong when she says no-one is talking about these things (loads of people talk about tackling objectification, lack of SRE, rape culture) and she words some things really poorly (the flirtation “leading to” the rape, the “walk like a fuck” line, which makes my skin crawl). And she is so hung up on this guy being “nice”. How many “pillars of the community” have turned out to be manipulative abusers?

Really she shouldn’t have written this, she should have just told everyone to check out “Yes Means Yes” (which is a bloody great blog from what I’ve read there and they do an amazing job at talking about BDSM too). Because essentially that’s her point, that we need a framework of enthusiastic consent, and basic respect for each other’s boundaries. She makes a big song and dance of how we don’t do this, how no-one talks about it. Maybe not enough people are talking about it, not loudly enough, but wouldn’t it have been so much more productive to say “oh hey here are some great people doing good work on these important issues” instead of putting out this weird navel-gazing post.

Thank you! To clarify, in writing a post saying “oh hey here are some great people doing good work on these important issues” I wouldn’t expect it to just include Yes Means Yes, I’m sure there are lots of organisations and people working in these areas. :)

[…] Ally Fogg, Why Did The Good Men Project Publish A Blog By An Unrepentant and Unconvicted Rapist?, On Why Men Rape And Why They Don’t, and The Dreadful Dangers of Normalization And The Terrible Mistakes of the Good Men Project. […]

Both your posts on this issue have been really thoughtful and thought-provoking – thank you. It’s a relief to read considered reflection on issues as emotive, reactive and complex as this. Your capacity to distinguish between the crime and the criminal is equally relieving – and rare. Demonising the behaviour of rapists is so important, and still rarely done but demonising the people, or all men, is unhelpful to say the least. Rapists need to be held responsible for the choices and actions they make – and they are always choices – and they need to be questioned and held accountable for the beliefs and rationalisations that make such choices and actions possible. And yes, men who appear ‘nice’ do commit rape – in fact, people who commit crimes like sexual violence are often heavily invested in appearing ‘nice’ in order to commit the crimes they do. But to suggest that nice, well-meaning men just accidentally, unfortunately, unintentionally end up committing rape through no fault of their own is a breath-taking new form of carte blanche for rapists. It’s not their fault, it’s society’s! While undoubtedly there are problematic cultures and messages that complicate our understanding of consent and a truly positive sexuality this is no excuse for rape and it’s disappointing how readily people still provide these rationalisations to rapists to protect themselves from having to face the altogether unpleasant truth that some people, even people you love and trust, just don’t care enough about others to privilege their right to provide or refuse consent and to live in safety from violence over their own sexual desire. Your capacity to talk about these issues in an accessible, yet sophisticated, way is truly something. Your reflection that any of us who choose to speak or write publicly about matters such as sexual violence have a moral imperative to consider the audiences who may access our work and what the impact of our words may be is a message that is just far too rare and again, so good to hear. Thank you.

[…] In response to Royse’s claim that calling people like her friend “bad guys” is basically saying “at least 50% of the men out there are bad” – i.e., a claim that the majority of men are rapists – Ally Fogg points out that nice guys don’t knowingly commit rape and that most men don’t rape. […]

To follow on what you were saying about how rape victims feel. I think it’s incredibly offensive to be publishing a rapist’s story/version of events when that’s the story of a rape survivor who isn’t getting a say in how their story is being told. Especially, when this is supposedly a “feminist” site that claims to care about the victims of rape. Unless the victim of the rapist gave their permission that their story could be told by the rapist, I think it’s not supportive of rape victims at all to do this.

I would feel violated again if I found out a feminist site had given a platform for my rapist to tell the story of my rape (even if I remained anonymous) from his point of view, even if he was trying to turn it into a “teaching moment”.

It strikes me the trouble with the ‘Quit Partying’ piece is that it can be read in one of two ways. The first, as you’ve put forward here, is that this is an account of an unrepentant rapist, who refuses to acknowledge or appreciate the ramifications of what they have done, and for whom the exercise of writing the piece is simply to excuse the inexcusable.

The second reading, however, is one which is much more morally fraught and difficult in lots of ways, and revolves around the idea of what the writer describes as ‘good consent’.

(‘Good consent’, so it’s implied, is a moral concept and one which is potentially more stringent than rape as it is legally defined here in the UK. This would involve consent unclouded and unimpeded by alcohol or drugs; whereas British law defines the inability to consent as ‘complete incapacity’, to use the exact phrase of the current Attorney General, Dominic Grieve.)

For if you read the piece back again, there’s unfortunately nothing in it which demonstrates – completely unequivocally – that rape has been committed in the legal sense of the term. The closest it gets to describing compulsion is where it talks about pressing someone ‘up against a wall.’ Yet even this is not clear, as we will all have seen films (and maybe read accounts), where men and women push each other up against walls or the sides of elevators during acts of consensual sex. (Might well happen in real life from time to time, as well.) At the end of the paragraph it reads ‘I walked away with the impression that it had been consensual, if not really sensible.’

The phrase ‘rape is a cost of doing business’ certainly sounds abhorrent (and just on the level of the sheer offensiveness of the language probably is so), but if, in reality, this actually means having a crisis of conscience about being
accused, retrospectively, of sex without consent, on the basis that the accuser feels he/she would not have performed the same actions when sober, then in that case, I suppose you would need to know exactly what happened in order to make a clear judgement upon it.

(Sorry – a bit wordy – but I hope you get the general drift of the concepts I’m trying to get across.)

Hugo Schwyzer’s been writing there forever, where’s your complaint? This is why feminists cannot be trusted. They are ideologically inclined to nitwit as a way to bash men, the equality angle is merely a cover for their activities.

Developments. Jill Fillipovic of Feministe demanded the GMP make reparations by removing MRAs from the site, despite the fact that the articles in question were not written by MRAs and in no way representative of what MRAs campaign on (and I maintain were a feminist attempt to demonstrate the existence of “rape culture”, which is a misandrist demonisation tactic and nothing more). The GMP are complying, quietly removing articles by Paul Elam, QuietRiotGirl and GirlWritesWhat. They’re currently leading with an article demanding sympathy for abusive women, headed with a photo of Aileen Wuornos of all people, and apparently doubling down on the “moderation”.